This Song Will Save Your Life

by Leila Sales

  “Someday you’ll go to prom,” Sally told me.

  “Prom is even better than the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal,” Chava added.

  It was unclear why these predictions would make me want to stay alive, but I didn’t argue. And I learned quickly that joking about suicide with these girls got me nowhere. The day I brought in a sharp knife to cut an orange for lunch, Chava started to tremble as though I had already slashed my throat and blood was now pouring out of my mouth. One day I said something along the lines of “I have so much homework, I want to die,” and it took me the rest of lunch period to talk my friends off the running-to-the-guidance-counselor ledge.

  “I don’t want to kill myself,” I kept telling them.

  But everyone else at school was saying that I did. And who do you think Chava and Sally believed, me or everyone else at school?

  Actually, though they would never admit to this, I think they were secretly thrilled to be friends with someone who other people were talking about. Granted, what other people were saying about me was “If I were Elise Dembowski, I would want to off myself, too.” Nonetheless, my classmates knew who I was, which meant they practically knew who Chava and Sally were, too, which meant it was only a matter of time before my friends could ascend to their rightful places as Brooke Feldstein’s ladies-in-waiting.

  It was funny: When I called Amelia, it was because I wanted attention. And now I was getting it. But this wasn’t the attention I had wanted.

  Throughout it all, as May went on, Fake Elise kept updating the online journal. Some days I was talking about various ways to die. Some days I was talking about all the reasons why I hated myself. Some days I was talking about how I wished I had Ashley Mersky’s body, or Gina McKibben’s boyfriend, or Alexandra Pleet’s parents—whatever it was that could turn me into someone other than me, someone better.

  The blog wasn’t updated every single day, and I know this because I looked at it every single day.

  I don’t know why.

  More than once I thought about showing it to someone in power. The vice principal, maybe, though I had never interacted with Mr. Witt outside of the iPod incident last spring. And honestly, that hadn’t gone so well for me, and I didn’t have reason to believe that he would handle this problem any better.

  I could have shown it to Vicky or Char, because isn’t that what friends are for? And weren’t we friends? But just thinking about doing that made me feel ashamed. It would be like saying to them, “Here. This is what everyone thinks of me. What about you? What do you think of me now?”

  I thought about telling my parents, or Ms. Wu, who was so eager for me to have a personal problem so that she could solve it. But ultimately I didn’t tell anyone. I just didn’t see what good it would do. Anyway, if I showed this blog to a parent or a teacher, wouldn’t they believe that it was true, too, just like Chava and Sally did? Wouldn’t they, like Amelia, believe that this was just another one of my cries for help?

  On Wednesday evening, as my father and I sat in the living room, him reading the newspaper and me working on math problems, both of us munching on our takeout Thai, the room silent except for the Doors album on the stereo, I considered just saying it. If I opened my mouth, I felt like the words would fall out: Dad, some kids at school are being mean to me.

  But here’s a question for you: And then what?

  I remembered sixth grade. The first year of middle school, which seemed like a very big deal. We got an arts elective. We were eleven years old now, so we were finally trusted to make decisions about our own lives.

  I took my arts elective choice very, very seriously. The options were painting, theater, chorus, or reading. Reading is not actually an art; it was a remedial class. I felt bad for the kids who had to take reading. It didn’t seem fair that they weren’t allowed to learn how to paint until they were able to read at grade level.

  Anyway, after much deliberation, I chose theater. I liked to play pretend, and theater class seemed like an opportunity to play pretend, only with everyone paying attention to me.

  What actually happened in theater class was that we played a lot of “theater games,” like the one where you make a sound and a motion at the same time, or the one where you walk around the room at different speeds, or the one where you mirror a partner’s motions. After three weeks of this it occurred to me that maybe our teacher, Madame Chevalier, did not actually know anything about theater.

  One day she had us play a game where you alliterate your first name with an adjective about you. Like Lizzie Reardon was “Likable Lizzie”—even though I would describe a dead skunk as likable before assigning that adjective to Lizzie.

  Maybe I will someday discover that all Broadway actors audition for roles by playing a game where they alliterate their first names with adjectives. Maybe I will discover that Madame Chevalier was some kind of method acting genius. But I do not think that is going to happen.

  Anyway, when it came to my turn, I said, “Eloquent Elise.” Which is following the rules of the game, right? But then everybody laughed at me. And called me “Eloquent Elise” for the next three days. Which you wouldn’t think would be a bad thing; I mean, eloquent is a compliment. But I could tell that no one was saying it as a compliment, and that was what confused me.

  Eventually I went to my dad and I told him what was going on. I remember crying and just repeating “Why?” over and over.

  “They’re teasing you because they’re jealous of you,” Dad said, taking my hands in his and looking into my eyes.

  “Why?” I sniffled. Were they jealous that I was eloquent? Were they jealous that I knew what the word eloquent meant?

  “They’re jealous of you because you’re smart and you’re talented and you know who you are.”

  I stopped crying then. The words buzzed around my brain like hummingbirds, filling me with air. I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.

  But now my father looked upset. “Come on,” he said, and he took me to the basement. There are four units in my dad’s building, so there’s a lot of stuff in his basement: baby strollers and washing machines and broken furniture.

  Dad found a softball bat and used it to gesture at an old futon. “When I feel bad,” he said, “I like to come down here.”

  The basement was cold, and I hugged my arms to my chest. “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “it gets all the bad feelings out of me.”

  And then he raised the softball bat and started whacking the futon like a lunatic, screaming and swearing the whole time, his arms wild, the futon sagging underneath the impact of the bat again and again. “Don’t you dare talk to my daughter that way!” he hollered, his voice guttural, like a bear’s roar.

  After a minute he stopped and turned to me, breathing hard. “Here.” He held the softball bat out to me. “Your turn.”

  I hugged my arms in tighter and backed away. I didn’t want to hit that futon. I wasn’t mad. I didn’t need to scream and attack a piece of furniture. I just needed someone to like me.

  After a long moment, my dad laid the softball bat down. We went back upstairs. And we never spoke about that incident again, even though I couldn’t shake the feeling that my dad was disappointed in me. Like he had wanted me to be as angry as he was, when I wasn’t angry at all.

  The next day at school, we were forming our circle at the beginning of theater class when Lizzie slipped in next to me and cooed, “Eloquent Elise, how many words do you know?”

  I blinked at her.

  “A million?” she pressed. “A thousand? A hundred? You must know more than a hundred words, Elise. After all, you are so eloquent.”

  “I … don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?” The kids nearby giggled. “But how can that be? Eloquent Elise, I thought you knew everything.”

  So I took a deep breath, and I drew myself up to my full height—which, at the time, was roughly four feet—and I recited, “You are just jealous of me. You’re jealous
because I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am.”

  There was a moment of silence in which I thought that maybe, finally, I had bested them. Maybe Lizzie was about to be like, “Oh my God, you’re right.”

  Instead, Lizzie and her friends began to shriek with laughter. I felt like I was surrounded by a thousand cawing birds. “I’m smart and I’m talented and I know who I am,” they sang at me, over and over, for the rest of the period, and throughout every theater class thereafter, until the words that had once sounded so uplifting became an insult, a joke.

  Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, so I quit theater for another arts elective. But painting and chorus were full. So I had to switch into remedial reading. I spent the rest of the semester learning to read picture books of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Because that is where the eloquent go.

  So now, four years later, as I thought about confiding in my dad, I tried to figure out what it was that I thought he might be able to change. And the answer was: nothing.

  So I said: nothing.

  But it was okay. The blog and the silence and the secrets and the Chava and Sally lunchtime suicide help line. It was okay because that wasn’t everything. I had my night life, too, and that was what was real.

  I hung out with Vicky more and more. I could tell from their raised eyebrows and suppressed smiles that my parents were thrilled about this, clearly thinking, A friend! Elise has a real, live friend! But aloud they played it cool, acting like, “Oh, yeah, Elise has friends all the time.” And for my part I volunteered no information about Vicky. She belonged to a different world from my parents’, and I was going to keep it that way.

  Vicky brought me to her favorite clothing boutiques and I brought her to my favorite record stores. On Friday night I skipped dinner with my dad to meet Vicky downtown for pizza and a movie at the indie cinema. We spent most of dinner playing a game called When We’re Famous.

  “When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “I’ll perform at Radio City Music Hall and my rider will include a bucket filled with cinnamon jelly beans. Just cinnamon, no other flavors. A stagehand will have to go through and pick them out. And if he accidentally leaves in any cherry jelly beans, because he mistakes them for cinnamon, I will have him fired on the spot.”

  “When we’re famous,” I said, “people will buy action figures that look like us. No little girls will play with Barbies anymore. They will only want rock music action figures.”

  “When we’re famous,” Vicky said, “we can open a camp for girls who are artists, and it will be free, so even if their parents say ‘No one makes a career as a musician’ and refuse to spend a penny on their arts education, they can still afford to come.”

  “When we’re famous,” I said, “everyone will know our names.”

  The next week I met up with Vicky and Harry at Teatotaler, which is like a coffee shop except for (surprise!) tea. Harry and I individually took notes on Macbeth, which we had both been assigned at our respective schools. My English class was a full act ahead of his, so I kept spoiling it for him.

  “Oh, no,” I murmured, turning a page.

  “What?” Harry asked. He glanced up from his book.

  “Nothing.”

  A moment passed.

  “Oh, no,” I said again, sounding even more horrified.

  “What?” both Vicky and Harry asked this time.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Okay,” said Vicky, and she went back to pretending to read a thick book of literary criticism for one of her classes while texting with Pippa.

  “I want to know,” Harry said.

  “Well, if you’re sure…” I leaned in and whispered, “All of Macduff’s family just got murdered.”

  Harry groaned and tossed his copy of the play aside. “I hate you.”

  I shrugged. “I told you that you didn’t want to know.”

  “Excuse me, babe.” Vicky looked up from her phone for long enough to flag down the male barista who was clearing the table next to ours. “Any chance you’d treat a girl to another tea bag?” She batted her long lashes. “Something steamy.”

  The barista looked confused. “You can order up at the counter, ma’am.” He walked away.

  Vicky sighed and her eyelashes went back to normal. “No one appreciates my feminine wiles.”

  Harry snorted.

  “Hey.” Vicky turned to me. “Do you want to hear the new Dirty Curtains song? We just recorded it last weekend.”

  “I’d love to!” I answered at the same time that Harry whined, “Aw, Vicky, no.”

  “Why not?” Vicky demanded.

  “Because.” Harry’s face was red. “It’s embarrassing. We’re just going to watch Elise while she has to sit there and pretend to like our music? I mean … she’s a DJ!”

  I giggled into my teacup.

  “Harry,” Vicky said, “I don’t know how to break this to you, but you are in a band. And that means that sometimes people are going to hear our music. Deal with it.”

  She pressed a few buttons on her cell phone, and then the opening drumbeats of a song kicked in. Vicky turned up the volume as loud as it would go. The guitar came in next—rich, raw, powerful. And then Vicky’s voice.

  “Screw you, too.

  No, I don’t want you back.

  With your sneers and your jeers

  And your worthless attacks.”

  The barista came over to us again. “Hey,” he said, “could you guys turn that off? This is a public place, and it’s annoying the other customers.”

  “Sorry,” we said in unison.

  “Did you like it, though?” Harry asked me after the barista walked away.

  “I can’t wait to listen to the whole thing.”

  Harry flushed. “You’re, like, obligated to say that, though.”

  “I still mean it,” I said. “You guys are really good.”

  “Way too good for this place,” Vicky agreed, slamming shut her book. “Let’s get out of here and go annoy strangers somewhere else.”

  It was good to have Vicky.

  And then, of course, there was Char.

  Char and I fell into a pattern, too. Every Thursday night, I would walk over to Start as soon as my family was asleep. Char would say hi to me like we were just friends, nothing more, and I would plug my laptop into his mixer like we were just friends, nothing more. We never greeted each other with a hug or a kiss; nothing. I would start each Thursday night convinced that whatever Char and I had between us was over now, and I would be walking home at a relatively reasonable hour.

  And by the end of each Thursday night, Char and I were making out in the DJ booth like our lives depended on it, my hands in his back pockets, his hands in my hair, our tongues exploring each other’s mouths, coming up for air only when it was time to transition into a new song.

  It wasn’t because we got drunk as the night went on. I didn’t drink at all, and Char didn’t drink much because, as he pointed out, “This is my job. You can’t get wasted at your job.”

  It wasn’t an effect of alcohol. It was more like we got drunk on the night.

  Invariably, even if I was done with my half-hour set by one a.m., I would hang around until Start ended, at two. Then Char and I would load the equipment into his car, and he would drive us to his apartment, where we would fall into bed and continue what we had started in the bar, only with far, far fewer clothes. We would keep that up until one or both of us fell asleep.

  At five thirty, my phone alarm would go off.

  “Jesus Christ,” Char groaned into his pillow. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night.”

  Then I would make Char drive me home immediately, before my mom woke up and noticed that I wasn’t there.

  This was easier the first night, when I walked over to Char’s from my dad’s. My dad was late to bed and late to rise, especially on weekends. So when I jolted awake at eight a.m. on that first Saturday to the feeling of Char kissing my neck, it was easy to scramble out of be
d, into Char’s car, and home before Dad had even gotten out of bed to collect the morning paper.

  Getting back to my mom’s house before she woke up, however, presented a different sort of challenge. This was a woman who operated on about six hours of sleep every night. “There’s just too much to do in a day,” she often said, as if this were a bad thing, though you didn’t have to know her well to know that she loved doing too much in a day.

  Thus, Char and I woke up at five thirty a.m.

  “Remind me why I’m doing this?” Char asked on the second Friday morning that we did this, as we sat in his cold car, the streetlights still on overhead.

  “Duh, because you love me,” I joked. But Char was practically asleep in the driver’s seat, and he didn’t laugh.

  And that was the last I would hear from Char until the next Thursday night. No text messages. No Saturday night dates. Nothing. Just a friendly greeting when I showed up at Start six days later, followed by a thousand kisses.

  I knew Char wasn’t my boyfriend. But was he anything to me? And was I anything to him? I wanted to ask him to explain this to me, but I couldn’t, because I suspected that I was supposed to understand already. I suspected that our relationship, if I could even call it that, was just one more thing covered in the Handbook for Being a Real Person, which somehow I had never received.

  “How do you know so much music?” Char asked me late on the following Thursday night as we lay in his bed together, my head resting on his chest. At Start earlier, I had played a set of late sixties soul. Char hadn’t recognized any of it, and I could tell he didn’t like this, because he told me it was his turn again well before my half hour was up, while the crowd was still enthusiastically dancing. I wanted to keep playing, but I didn’t. After all, it was his night.

  I had discovered that Char knew a lot of facts about music. He knew the names of drummers from famous bands, and then what other bands they had later gone out to start. He knew the names of dozens or possibly hundreds of music labels, and who had produced Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, and which members of the Beach Boys were brothers and which were cousins.

  I didn’t know any of that stuff. Music wasn’t history class; I didn’t need to memorize a thousand dates and names. I just cared a lot about music.